the honeymoon is over
by clairebare
Summary: familiarity breeds contempt. dark and sardonic.
1. Chapter 1

He's out in the living room lying on the couch pretending to be asleep, a cup of his damn tea cooling on the coffee table in front of him. Someday, he'll use a coaster and I'll die of shock. There's a whole pile of them right next to the couch. Since we got married, my wood coffee table, which I've kept in perfect condition, has become covered with rings.

I know he's peeved with me because he wanted an omelet for dinner and I forgot, on purpose, to pick up a carton of eggs at the supermarket. He doesn't notice but the whole house perpetually reeks of the sulfur smell of eggs. Disgusting. No roomspray or scented candle seems to help. And I now have an aversion to eggs in any form. I've started to hate seeing him eat them. Can't he eat something that requires a knife?

After an enthusiastic start, when we became a couple and then got married, I now have to treat him with kid gloves hoping to get him in a good enough mood to have sex.

Turns out, all those years when I thought he was an upbeat guy brought down by the death of his family, I now realize that he's, by nature, a very depressed and moody person who can sometimes get himself together to be gregarious with strangers.

So in public, he's a fun guy but as soon as he's home in private with me, he descends into an irritable melancholy. Angela must have had a hard road with him too. And that kind of personality would be tough on a kid.

He had savings from his time in show business that he used for years to supplement his small salary at the CBI. But after he paid for a big, lavish wedding, which I didn't want, that money ran out.

The house in Malibu is worth about ten million dollars but he won't sell it. He still has a sentimental attachment and that means, we have to scrape together forty thousand a year for the taxes. So I'm counting pennies and, since he doesn't care about money, he has no anxiety about it.

When we got married, I made him swear to quit gambling. So I'd be humiliated if I had to ask him to play poker to get us solvent.

I always admired his brilliant mind and we were a great team at the CBI. He was the brain and I was the brawn. He could talk circles around perps. I could kick the crap out of them and then throw the book at them.

Now that we're married, the intellectual gap and even the socio-economic differences between us are very apparent. He's way ahead of me in solving any problem and is very well read. His tastes are sophisticated. He understands wine, art, poetry, the ballet and the opera. He likes foreign films. He's well travelled, can get by in Spanish and is fluent in French.

My tastes run to beer and nachos and team sports and action flicks and romance novels. So it turns out, we don't have much in common. And he has to notice that a lot of his interests are way over my head. I never knew this but Angela had a PHD in Physics.

I can hear him stirring in the living room. He'll probably want to go out to a diner for eggs. So I have to get off the phone now, Dr. Meltzer. Tell me the truth, do you think this marriage can be saved?


	2. Chapter 2

I find the idea of playing Pygmalion to Lisbon's Eliza Doolittle more and more draining. I didn't sign on for this.

She's a stubborn person. Sometimes she's stubborn just to be stubborn. So whenever I try to expand her horizons. Take her to the opera, attend some serious theater, she always makes a great show of fidgeting in her seat and then nodding off to sleep during the first act.

How many times have I drunk beer in cop bars with her or accompanied her to the shooting range? Maybe if she weren't so invested in hating my, as she calls them, snobbish hobbies, she might learn to like them.

By contrast, she demanded that I abandon poker and gambling. Certainly not high class pursuits. If not for this arbitrary ban on gaming, we could spend some nights out together that she might actually enjoy. Not to mention, it would ease our considerable financial problems. I'll be damned if I'll sell my house. She created a situation where I'm unable to afford it. All she has to do is ask and I could spend an evening playing cards and solve our problems.. But stubborn Lisbon would rather starve to death.

I enjoy buying her gifts. Especially jewelry and clothes. But every time I take her out to a nice restaurant, she insists on wearing her blazer and Lisbon loafers. Would it kill her to put on the stuff I bought her? She knows I'd like it. But she has to make it into a war of the wills. It's exhausting.

When we worked together at the CBI, she always seemed to enjoy that I was knowledgeable in many areas. Now she acts as if I'm trying to put her down if I bring up philosophy or art or poetry. And that paranoia is eating away at my feelings for her.

Take sex. Of course that isn't as novel and passionate as it was in the first months of our relationship and subsequent marriage. But now she's so insistent and rather coarse in the way she initiates sex, barking orders and even inflicting physical pain, I find myself a bit turned off. No one wants to be treated like meat or made to perform like a trained seal. Angela was very lusty but she was still a lady.

I used to think Lisbon's cop training influenced her private life making her uptight and controlling. Now I know it's the opposite, her background made her an angry, isolated, grievance collector who found her ideal career path in law enforcement.

Oops, I hear Lisbon getting off the phone. We'll probably have a tiff about where to go for dinner, so I have to fly. From your first impression, Dr. Adler, do you think this marriage can be saved?


End file.
